Dusty Grooves: Recent Episodes
Dusty Grooves
Natalie Mering’s fifth LP grapples with the separation and alienation we’ve all been feeling thanks to the yawning distance- both physical and cultural- that has thrown modern society such a loop the past few years. While Mering muses about how to cope with unprecedented heart-heaviness, her music takes that darkness and floods it with light and transcendence.
These piano-driven songs, completely modern and hearkening to less mechanized times all at once, balm the wounds with a warm bath of strings, background singers, bells and harp (courtesy of Mary Lattimore) and, of course, Mering’s dulcet and clear voice leading us through. The chord progressions of “Children of the Empire” recall the best of Brian Wilson’s late 60s work with Van Dyke Parks, but temper the elated feelings with the cosmic heartbreak of minor/diminished/augmented progressions inspired by George Harrison. But these influences find a new kind of synthesis that only Mering could accomplish that yields feeling in equal measure with her impassioned lyrics. “God Turn me into a Flower” gets some inspiration from old-time gospel, updated for our times. The words evoke the same concept as “bend like a reed” of Taoism.
As long as I stand to face the crowd
To know my name, to know its sound
It’s good to be soft when they push you down
Oh, God, turn me into a flower
It always takes me, it’s such a curse to be so hard
You shatter easily and can’t pick up all those shards
Simple organ chords and Mering’s passionate voice starts the song perfectly, and it builds to a nature-meets nurture crescendo that’s the most moving thing I’ve heard since Spiritualized’s Songs in A&E.
Kudos also to Subpop for the quiet, distortion-free vinyl. Absolutely stunning. Without a doubt this is my favorite album of 2022.
Recently I took the plunge on an older cassette deck. I say “older” instead of “old’ because of relativity; I’m older than the deck, and am not young, so to call a mid-1980s piece of technology “old” seems a bit hypocritical, if not outright cruel. Like all older stereo equipment that makes it to the […]
Summers I get up early, walk the dog if he’s game, and then go water the garden. It’s a ritual that I observe perhaps not religiously, but I have spent an awful lot of early mornings doing it. This fine sunny Summer morning was no different. I was doomscrolling social media while filling up buckets […]
Maybe it’s just nostalgia. I was a computer jockey at a public library when the concept of the “Freenet” was a hot topic of discussion. A state grant would bring the Internet to our facility via Ethernet cabling and a network switch installed in the building. Along with this would be actual PCs at public […]
I’ve been a Brian Eno fan for decades. There are lots of interesting bits from his album packaging that stuck in my memory- like the set of post cards by Peter Schmidt mentioned on the cover of Before and After Science (which apparently come with the 2-LP reissue- now I need to get that). But […]
This was the first time I’d heard on of these. Thanks for reddit community for identification. Didn’t expect anything so I rushed to grab my phone and record what I could.
In late October of last year, I had a tangle with gift wrap and a set of stairs, and I lost, breaking and dislocating my right ankle in the process. Ever since I’ve been stuck at home for the most part. First there was a the trip to the emergency room, where my broken, dislocated […]
This is a found reel-to-reel recording apparently recorded on site in 1966 during a Yale music student’s degree performance. Quality is not bad for what’s essentially a field recording at 3 3/4 ips on a 4″ reel.
I recently had the need to enumerate all of the filespace being used on a server. I needed it broken down by folders, and within those folders, the space consumed by popular file formats, mainly, image formats and PDFs. The server OS is Windows Server and I had to use Windows 10 as the platform […]
Our Christmas episode is here! Features such DG favorites as Beck, Wild Man Fischer, The Tim Fuller Experience, James Brown, Kay Martin, Grandaddy, Orson Welles and The Ventures.
Part two of a two-part series. Non-definitive dip into the history of electronic music. Featuring Finnish sound surfers of the unconscious Kemialliset Ystävät, Italian electronic composer Pietro Grossi, German electronic band Popol Vuh, Prog rock icon Robert Fripp, Yellow Magic Orchestra alum Ryuichi Sakamoto, Star Trek original series soundtrack composer Alexander Courage, post-punk innovators Suicide, […]
Part one of a two-part series. Non-definitive dip into the history of electronic music. Featuring mad scientist of experimental music, Daphne Oram; Mad Men meets synthesizers in the work of Raymond Scott; modern master David Sylvian; German noise outfit Der Plan; elegant works of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. Playlist The Little Orchestra in Sonovox- […]
I’ve been using a 120gb iPod Classic for years and had only managed it with iTunes. Finally, I’d just had enough with iTunes hogging more and more ram, and the interface becoming more labyrinthine and less useful, I finally decided to get an iTunes and Windows divorce at the same time. I didn’t walk into […]